ICYMI: Wealthy GOP Candidates Face Rough Homecomings [Wall Street Journal]

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Wall Street Journal: Wealthy GOP Candidates Face Rough Homecomings
By Siobhan Hughes
September 29, 2024

• Backers of incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr.—the son of former Gov. Bob Casey Sr.—have tweaked McCormick for mispronouncing the names of a popular local beer, Yuengling, and for mistakenly referring to a large drink from Wawa, the beloved convenience store chain, as a Big Gulp—a 7-Eleven offering. TV ads label him “Connecticut Dave.”

• The question of home-state credentials is playing a central role in several key races where deep-pocketed Republicans—either not born in the state or who have returned home after lucrative careers elsewhere—are trying to oust long-serving incumbent Democrats.

• “It’s how parochial a state is—some are more so than others,” said Jessica Taylor, who follows Senate races for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan elections tracker. “If there’s questions about how long you’ve lived there and where your businesses are, then it becomes a question of can you make a connection with voters,” she said.

• In Pennsylvania, Montana and Wisconsin—three of the seven most competitive Senate races—Republicans have had to grapple with the “carpetbagger” label that Democrats are applying, knowing the power of the attack for voters who are rooted firmly in their states.

• Eric Hovde, the Wisconsin GOP challenger…earned much of his wealth through running a Washington, D.C., financial advisory firm and a bank started in California. 

• Perhaps nowhere is the carpetbagger attack more potent than in Pennsylvania, where about seven out of every 10 people eligible to vote were born in the state and share common histories. 

• Democrats, who currently control the Senate 51-49, are using the same playbook from two years ago, when they labeled Republican Mehmet Oz as an outsider, helping to sink his bid to win an open Senate seat against John Fetterman. 

• “I didn’t think that anyone could give us more than Oz, but apparently the competition was there,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D., Pa.) said at a recent Casey campaign event. A Casey campaign spokesperson, Kate Smart, said it “comes down to who you can trust, and Pennsylvanians know they can’t trust David McCormick.” 

• Charlie Hansler, a retired railroad worker, isn’t sold on McCormick’s Pennsylvanian identity. “He just recently bought a place in the last couple years, but even when he was here, he’d just be commuting back and forth,” Hansler said.

See also: MEMO: Senate Republican Recruits Have a Candidate Quality Problem; ICYMI: Democrats attack Senate GOP’s wealthy “carpetbagger” candidates [Axios]; ICYMI: How problematic is the Senate GOP’s ‘carpetbagger’ problem? [MSNBC].

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